Friday, 26 October 2012

Ed Burtynsky's Album

Mines #15 Inco Tailings Pond, Sudbury, Ontario 1985Mines #16 Inco - Frood Open Pit. Sudbury, Ontario 1985Mines #19 Westar Open Pit Coal Mine. Sparwood, British Columbia 1985Mines #26 Silica Mine. Revelstoke, British Columbia 1985Old Factories #2,Tiexi District, Shenyang City,Liaoning Province, 2005According to his personal website, "The city of Shenyang, located in China’s northeast Tiexi District, was until very recently China’s industrial backbone and home to the most densely focused concentration of heavy industry. Occupying Japanese forces built many of these factories in the 1930s as part of a Japanese military-industrial complex that was to serve as a platform for further Japanese advance into the rest of China. A few of the factories are still in use today.

Since the mid-1990s, 35 to 40 million workers in China’s State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) have lost their jobs because of economic restructuring. This has occurred nationwide, but the Northeast, as the core of China’s state-owned heavy industry, has been especially hard hit. In Shenyang, SOEs are rapidly being demolished and rebuilt at industrial parks outside the city, along with many other new factories. Property once used by these immense old factories is now being designated as residential and commercial, spurring real estate frenzy in Shenyang.

In the late 1990s, China’s government came under intense financial pressure to turn around failing industries. Under Zhu Rongji, China’s then economic czar, tough decisions were made. Ensuing massive layoffs rocked the Northeast’s SOEs, inciting protests and riots by workers angry about inadequate severance promises and compensation packages. Factories once employing 20,000 now function at similar or increased productivity levels using 75 per cent less employees—a testament to the effectiveness of the government’s restructuring policies."Old Factories #8,Shenyang Heavy Machinery Group,Tiexi District, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, 2005Highway #1Los Angeles, California, USA, 2003